This study developed and evaluated a social skills training program for institutionalized mildly or moderately retarded and dually diagnosed individuals. Social skills were conceptualized as requiring an action or reaction within six skill areas: compliments, social interactions, politeness, criticism, social confrontation, and questions/answers. The program taught social skills using a commercially available table game, Sorry, and a specially designed card deck. Each card represented one of the skill areas and was designed to train either an actor or reactor response. The program featured response specific feedback, self-monitoring, individualized reinforcers, and individualized performance criterion levels. A multiple baseline across two groups (N = 3 per group) revealed that the game contingencies increased social skills in all targeted areas. After training, the subjects displayed their newly learned skills at or above their trained levels in two different settings with novel persons present. Although untargeted, the complexity of the subjects' responses increased across conditions, since there was a steady increase in the number of words they used per response. The program appears to be a viable means of training social skills since it uses standardized training procedures, requires only one facilitator, and is in itself a social situation that may encourage interactions with peers, cooperation, competition, and politeness.
The effects of feedback and self-recording on the small group conversational behaviors of two head trauma youths were evaluated. Feedback involved providing clients a light signal corresponding to positive or negative social interactions. The self-monitoring procedure required that the clients flip a switch corresponding with their positive or negative interactions. An A,-B,-C,-A2-C2-B2 design in which the feedback phase (B) and self-monitoring phase (C) were alternated to control for order effects demonstrated the efficacy of both interventions. Performance gains were also shown to generalize to less structured situations, bringing the clients' level of positive responses into a range established with a social comparison group.
Deficits in social skills are a distinguishing characteristic of behaviorally disordered individuals. There is an established relationship between deficits in interpersonal skills and long term adjustment difficulties, such as juvenile delinquency, bad conduct discharges from the military, and psychiatric hospitalization. In addition, employers consider social competencies to be more important than specific occupational skills. Thus, the development of social competence is important for behaviorally disordered individuals. Over the last 5 years numerous studies have evaluated social skill enhancement strategies. The present review was conducted to evaluate this research. The results indicate that: (a) research has failed to build a comprehensive body of knowledge due to the absence of a conceptual base; (b) training priorities have not been matched to learner needs or characteristics; (c) the social significance of program effects has generally been ignored; (d) independent and dependent variables have not been evaluated and applied with equal precision; (e) investigators often fail to evaluate the generality of effects to other settings, responses, and time; and finally (f) research has not shown that community adjustment can be enhanced through training.
During the elementary and middle school years, the needs of the child with disabilities center on acquiring appropriate academic, social, community access, and self-management skills. Family members must work together with a wide array of educational and related services personnel on behalf of their child with a disability and, at the same time, care for the needs of all members of the family. This article describes models and methods of advocacy, including self-advocacy, social support advocacy, interpersonal advocacy, and legal advocacy. Particular emphasis is placed on advocacy strategies for individual family members of the child with disabilities during the elementary and middle school years.
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